Posted by Cathy Taggart This is true even if you just look at the way the Church’s teaching has evolved historically. There seems to be some inconsistency in the fact that the Church does not take such an absolute stand on other life-and-death issues: I mean, if you can have a “just war”, why can you not have a “just abortion”? Also, I find it hard to believe that the Church’s stance has nothing to do with the fact that women – and least of all married women – have had NO input into the development of this teaching! In fact, I think that both sides in the abortion debate tend to greatly oversimplify matters. I find it disturbing when the “pro-choice” lobby seem to see a fetus as little more than part of a woman’s body, and they regard abortion as a private matter between a woman and her doctor. However, I also find it disturbing – quite distressing in fact – when the “pro-life” lobby seem to take it for granted that an embryo/fetus is a fully-fledged human being from the time it is just a few cells, that this should be unambiguously obvious to any half-intelligent and half-decent person, and that women who have abortions, and those who perform them, are no different from any “other” murderers! Yet many intelligent, morally decent people DO accept abortion as being justified under certain circumstances. And if you think about it calmly and objectively, I don’t think it is unambiguously obvious that a few-days- or few-weeks-old embryo is a human being. Obviously, life begins at conception, but does this necessarily mean that right from the start the fetus is a fully-fledged human being, with the same rights as you and I? I remember once reading the suggestion that we should regard the fetus (especially during the first few months) not so much as a “human being”, but as a “human becoming”. Thus, just as it gradually takes physical shape, and gradually grows towards viability as a human person, so it GRADUALLY acquires the rights that go with being human. The problem is, I believe, that abortion is literally a unique issue. In no other area do we get such a conflict between “right to life” and “right to one’s bodily integrity”; also, more perhaps than any other issue, it makes us confront the impossible question of what constitutes a “human being”. The Church’s teaching may seem the simplest way out, and also the way that puts us on “the side of the angels”. But we live in the murky, uncertain world of humans, not the world of the angels! I think the “pro-choice” lobby do have some valid points, and I believe we need to rethink this whole issue with honesty, openness and of course trust in God. Is anyone else “out there” prepared to wade though the murky waters and have a conversation about this vital matter?
on January 13, 2006, 2:23 pm
The recent controversy over the RU487 drug has again ignited the abortion debate. In one way, I’d very much like to wholeheartedly go along with the Church’s insistence on the sacredness of human life right from conception, but…well, it just doesn’t seem to stand up in the real world!
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